yum question, reverting to old packages.

[Richard Hally]

seth vidal wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 00:02 -0400, Robin Norwood wrote:
>> seth vidal <skvidal at linux.duke.edu> writes:
>>
>>> On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 15:31 +0900, Naoki wrote:
>>>> The docs don't mention anything about it but I'm wondering if yum can
>>>> handle this sort of functionality :
>>>>
>>>> rpm -Uvh --oldpackage http://kickstart/blah/name
>>>>
>>>> Right now it seems yum can install a specific version of a package,
>>>> but it can't 'rollback' to a version if that RPM is already installed.
>>>>
>>>> I'm guessing that's pretty easy for yum to do so maybe it already can
>>>> and I'm missing something? 
>>> installing an older version is not supported in yum.
>>>
>>> it could be - but I'm just not sure how happy we should be about
>>> supporting that process. It is fairly dangerous.
>> It can be fairly important - if the newest package breaks something,
>> it's good to be able to easily install an older version, or a version
>> between the current version and the newest.  It's ok if a special
>> incantation is needed to force yum to act that way, but if the only way
>> to get an older package is to go directly to RPM, I think that's less
>> than optimal.
>>
> 
> My concern is mostly with scriptlets.
> 
> It seems to me that there is no way to reliably reverse a scriptlet of
> any kind.
> 
> so reverting to an older version may not necessarily mean a functional
> system for the user.
> 
> -sv
> 
> 
How does 'rpm --oldpackage' manage it?
The times I have used it it seems to have worked correctly.

Richard